Documentary Filmmaker Jody Hassett Sanchez

My Lunch Date With the Founding Fathers?

Producer and documentary filmmaker Jody Hassett Sanchez is the president of Pointy Shoe Productions, a film company that focuses on issues of faith and culture; previously, she was a producer at ABC News. Before moderating a panel on cultural depictions of heaven and hell, she talked Ai Wei Wei, time-machine dating websites, and why she wishes she could get lost more often.

November 5, 2012

Q:

What’s hanging on your living room walls?

A:

Art, nails where art was, and a turtle shell my son found the other day on the beach on Cape Cod.

Q:

What’s your guilty pleasure?

A:

I’m blissfully free of guilt, but I have a lot of pleasures. I’d rank lobster right up there.

Q:

What’s the last documentary you saw?

A:

I just saw an amazing film about the Chinese artist Ai Wei Wei. Extraordinary—what a charismatic personality. It’s hard to do wrong on a film with someone that articulate about their art.

Q:

What’s the last lie you told?

A:

I think that I’m not tired. I told myself and a ton of people that I wasn’t tired, and I haven’t slept for eight hours in a really long time.

Q:

What’s your favorite thing about Los Angeles?

A:

The fact that everyone blue skies it here—everyone has big ideas. I sat at a café today at lunch and I heard three people pitching things—and no one said any of them were outrageous. That’s why big things happen here.

Q:

What’s your favorite part about being out of the TV news business?

A:

Having the final cut on all of my work.

Q:

How many pairs of shoes do you own?

A:

The name of my company is Pointy Shoes Productions, so I refuse to answer on the grounds that it could incriminate me.

Q:

Which website would you use for online dating?

A:

I’d go to the site where you can date people from earlier time periods. It’s just lunch with people from the 1700s.

Q:

What’s the one interview you wish you could have gotten as a producer?

A:

It was actually Fidel Castro. I was invited to go down to Cuba and spend five days with some foreign policy journalists. He’s notorious for keeping people waiting, and I had to go home—and the interview happened after we left. He likes to call journalists in the middle of the night and have them come in at 3 a.m. But I still love Havana, and I ended up marrying a Cuban two years later.

Q:

When’s the last time you got really lost?

A:

I wish I could get lost more often. I think the more you travel the more you have this built-in, refined GPS system. I yearn to get lost and discover things in a foreign city.